In view of the present state of the economy and the down sizing of the construction industry and the increased competition for the relatively few construction jobs presently available, there is a constant search for ways to reduce the overall construction costs whether it be by the use of improved tools or new solutions to a problem which requires fewer manhours to perform a particular task or a series of tasks which will permit a reduction in the overall bid price.
In the construction of commercial office buildings, it is frequently required that the doors specified in the job specifications are made of solid wood or hollow metal construction and frequently of a thirty-six inch width and sometimes larger widths where the doors are used as an entrance to a library, foyer, conference room, tenant suites, or the like. As one can readily appreciate, a door of this size, made of solid wood construction is very heavy, somewhere in the order of one hundred twenty five pounds. The usual practice in installing doors of this size and construction is for the workman to take a single door from a remote storage area and hand carry it to the location where it is to be installed and then, using a make-shift door stand, proceed to install the hinges and or hardware on the door. Then with the assistance of another workman, finalize the door mounting process by securing the free hinge-half to the door jamb.
With applicant's novel multi-use hand truck, a workman without assistance can carry up to five doors when the apparatus is used in its horizontal position as a transport apparatus. When used for installing hinges and hanging doors only three doors are placed thereon at the stack and hinges are installed on all three doors at that location. When the workman reaches the site where the first door is to be installed, he merely rolls a door off and proceeds to the next closest door location and rolls off another door and continues in this fashion until he gets to the last and most distant location where a door is to be installed. With only one door remaining on the hand truck, the workman merely grabs hold of an upper edge of the door and raises the upper end of the truck with the door thereon and maneuvers the truck into position until the hinhes are in alignment with the routed portions on the door jamb. When raised to its aligned vertical position, the workman merely slides the door horizontally off the hand truck to bring the hinges into alignment with the routed portions and then inserts the required number of screws into the door jamb to complete the mounting of the door to the door jamb. If during the alignment process, the door is too high relative to the routed door frame, the workman merely steps on the base plate to lower the door and bring it into alignment.
Another feature of applicant's apparatus includes a means of clamping an individual door to the frame of the hand truck which allows the workman to raise the truck and its door load from a horizontal position to the vertical position permitting ready maneuverability of the truck and door in preparation for hanging of the door.
A further feature of the applicant's novel multi-use hand truck is the ability to use the apparatus as a mobile horizontal worksurface which allows a construction workman to place construction supplies, cabinets, heavy door hardware and/or other boxed materials thereon. This conversion is accomplished by inserting a pair of two by eight inch boards into the two outermost pockets which are otherwise used as door supports and then placing a sheet of one half inch plywood thereover to provide the work surface. Swivel casters are attached to the base plate of the door support members and positioned such that when all four casters are in engagement with the floor, the two, larger diameter, non-swivel type, truck wheels are raised approximately one quarter of an inch off the floor. With this arrangement, the workman can readily rotate the entire truck including the tools and/or supplies thereon about the center thereof to provide ready access to the opposite side. It is also to be noted that each of the swivel casters are capable of supporting two hundred fifty pounds permitting a total load of one thousand pounds. However, only two of the swivel casters need be provided with locking wheels to prevent rolling when used in this manner. Also, the one half inch plywood surface may be secured to the two undersupports by screws, nails or the like.
Another feature of the novel multi-use hand truck is the use of connector plates which permit a second identical hand truck to be attached to the first hand truck. Such a feature would most likely be used when the apparatus is used in the planar surface mode and the door carrying mode, when you are carrying doors through double door areas.